There are a few issues that I have with eHow. First and foremost is that Demand Media, which owns eHow, does not reveal how it calculates payouts to writers, so you’re completely at their mercy. The second is that eHow is pretty strict about the formatting of its articles. All articles need to have a step-by-step format, which restricts the author whose how-tos are more free-formed. But other than those complaints, eHow has presented a simple and solid way to make some extra money online. In fact, it’s probably the quickest and easiest way to do so if you have next to no technical knowledge.

I started writing for eHow a little over 2 months ago, excited about the prospect of making some extra cash and intrigued by other eHow success stories I had read about. Soon after I started writing, I came up with a plan – targets for the number of articles I would write and how much I wanted to earn per month.

So, how am I doing?

Awful!

After starting like a bat out of hell, I’ve written almost no articles over the past month. (I went on vacation for a week, which stopped my momentum, and then had some other projects to work on.) I was targeting a total of 30 articles by the end of May and $10 in earnings for the month. But I only totaled 18 articles and $6.94. And I’ve only written 1 article in the first half of June! You can see my eHow progress below:

It’s not all bad. A few dollars in generated earnings for work already completed and in place is a nice thing. But I want to be making more.

So, what now? Clearly, I am off of my planned pace. Part of the reason has been a decrease in my motivation after the first month of registering with the site. I think a lot of this has to do with the regimen I had set up for myself. Before, I was writing 1 article almost every day. Publishing once a day was not too time-consuming in practice (the articles take me 30-60 minutes to write). But thinking about writing every day was taxing. Now, I plan to set aside a few hours once a week to write 5 articles at a time. My new plan should relieve some of that small stress by allowing me to go into “eHow mode” once a week instead of every day. And with the new plan comes my new earnings targets:

These are significantly lower than my previous estimates. I’ll keep you updated…

Back then, I was uneducated in the ways of responsible personal finance and the business of medical insurance. (But who really understands medical insurance in the US?) During my ER visit, I provided my medical insurance details, had my tests done, was cleared, and went home. I thought that was the end of it, and I put the visit behind me.

Fast forward five years to the fall of 2005. The student of personal finance I had become, I decided to check my credit for the first time in my life.

For those that don’t know, there are three major companies that aggregate personal credit information: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Each is required by law to allow you to check your credit once a year. Thus, you can effectively check your credit every 4 months if you use one company each time. For instance, check your credit with Experian every January, Equifax every May, and TransUnion every September. Websites like annualcreditreport.com make it easy to do this from one place.

So, back in 2005, I visited annualcreditreport.com, typed in all my information, and my credit report came up. Let’s see here… two credit card accounts in good standing, great, and… what’s this? Under “Account History”, were two accounts seriously past due under the name CALIFORNIA BUSINESS BU, listing unpaid balances of $176 and $60. California? What did I have to do with the California Business Bureau? I thought of the only time I’d been to the state, back in 2000, but had no idea what the balances could be related to.

I was upset about the $236 in bills I supposedly owed, but I was more upset about what you see below. My “PLUS Score” from Experian, which I interpreted as my FICO score, was much lower than I expected, better than only 31% of Americans. On the only credit-related accounts I held, both of my credit card accounts, I never even kept a running balance. I expected to be among the best US borrowers.

I searched the Internet for any phone number at the California Business Bureau and called it. After working my way through the hornets nest of automated phone prompts and talking to a few people, I found someone who knew about my accounts.

Me: Hi, I was looking at my credit report recently, and it looks like I owe some money to the Business Bureau. Can you tell me if I do? My name is…

Operator: Hold please… Yes, it looks like you have one outstanding balance owed to UCSD ER Physicians and one for UCSD Medical Center.

The hospital! Oh $#!+, I never paid a bill for that visit!

Me: Can I settle those bills right now?

Operator: Yes. How would you like to pay?

I gave my credit card information, was charged for the bills, and put the incident behind me once again. I was still upset. After all, how was I supposed to pay for a service I never received a bill for?! Tons of businesses and government bureaus had my personal information. I was living in New York, where I’ve lived in for most of my life! Surely, the California Business Bureau could have tracked me down and sent me a bill at home.

Fast forward to the spring of 2006. Recalling my plight the previous fall, I decided to check my credit again, in order to verify that I was in good standing.

Two credit card accounts in good standing, good… two previously unpaid accounts from San Diego medical professionals now showing zero balances, great… and… WHAT’S THIS?! One unpaid bill for $90 under the name CALIFORNIA RECOV SYSTEMS for money owed to “UCSD Medical Group”?!? I thought this was taken care of!

I tracked down a phone number online for California Recovery Systems and soon learned that they were a collection agency. Apparently the hospital, having tried unsuccessfully to contact me about my bill, turned over some of my unpaid balances to the collection agency in addition to the CBB.

I called the collection agency and spoke to a decidedly abrupt woman. (Wouldn’t you be if you had to deal with deadbeats all day?) The company’s attitude was apparent – intimidate the delinquent as much as possible to collect as much as possible. I asked the woman what the $90 charge on my credit report was for. She told me it was for my hospital visit, and that it was made up of about $62 originally billed plus $29 in interest accumulated. (Incidentally, this works out to a 6.5% interest rate being charged on my bill from 2000 to 2006. Given the balance was unpaid for years, I would have expected a much higher interest rate charge.)

Admittedly, the company could have charged me anything. After dealing with the unpaid bills for over half a year, I was fed up. I didn’t have the wherewithal to inquire about the detailed origin of the bill or how it came into the recovery agency’s hands. I wanted to put the problem behind me.

I asked the woman to make sure she had no additional unpaid accounts under my name, paid the charges, and hung up. I still have no idea why some of the bills wound up with the California Business Bureau and some with California Recovery Systems.

Fast forward to today. After 3 years of maintaining on-time bill payment, my credit score is back in my comfort range, somewhere just north of 700. But it was clearly hurt by the infamous San Diego Incident, and it’s not where it should be otherwise. Oh well. Lesson learned.

In the end, I took three things away from my experience:

Oh, and don’t get sick.

For those that don’t know, niche blogging for income involves creating a blog on some topic, placing advertising on it, and earning money every time a visitor clicks one of the ads. There’s a lot to consider when developing a good niche blog. Choosing the right topic is very important, since the advertising will be related to the blog’s content, and I’d prefer a field in which advertisers pay a lot for clicks. Also, the niche has to be balanced between popular and unpopular – too popular and my content will be lost in a sea of other websites, too unpopular and I won’t have an audience. The trick is to choose a niche that’s juuuuust right.

The blog also needs to attract a decent amount of traffic, since more visitors means more potential ad-clickers. Then there’s the issue of content – the more the better, so long as it’s high-quality. The more information for people to potentially browse, the more traffic might visit the blog.

There’s a whole host of information about niche blogging out there on the web, some of it excellent, some of it, well, sleezy-feeling. What got the fire started for me was an excellent set of forum posts on the topic. From there, it was a matter of googling for details and reading the blogs of other bloggers who niche blog!

My Niche Blog

So what about my blog?

At this stage, it’s in its infancy.

1. I have a domain name.
2. I have a Wordpress blogging template installed.
3. I have begun the process of accumulating content. I have planned to create about 60 articles before any are actually published. In this way, I’ll be able to post a steady stream of content should I become sidetracked by anything. I hope that regular content will go a long way toward retaining visitors in the beginning. I’ve used Elance to hire freelance writers for 20 of the articles, I have 20 more from article depository websites, and I will write 20 myself.

My Plan

I plan on starting to post content before the end of the month. I’ll post 1-2 articles per day for 1-2 months. I’ll promote the blog in a few ways too – social networking, making posts on related forums and blogs, contacting professionals and other bloggers who work in the niche field, etc. But my hope is that only leads to a fraction my traffic. If I have chosen a balanced niche, my blog should be near the top of many Google search rankings on the topic.

At first, I won’t place advertising on the blog. Once I establish a fair amount of traffic to the blog, around 100 unique visitors per day, I’ll put up ads via Google Adsense or another advertising source. By the way, I’m not going to reveal the name of the blog or its niche just yet, since I want to see if this experiment can work without traffic from Wrinkly Dollar.

I’ve set a short-term earnings goal of $5 per day by the end of July. $5 a day is $150 per month or $1,800 per year. Not much, but it will be a good start. If I can get there, I’ll have the motivation to grow those earnings even more. I’ll keep you updated…

There are a whole host of ways to save on your expenses, and trying to utilize them all can be overwhelming without an organized approach. For those who are looking to revamp their expense budget or to start saving a little (or a lot) of money on their monthly expenses, I recommend taking it slow at first. Good money management is about discipline, and you should approach it as long-term personal development and a lifestyle change, one that will allow you to live a better lifestyle in the coming years.

With this in mind, I recommend what I call the Top Down Approach to trimming your monthly expenses. When trying to figure out places to save, first focus on your largest expense and think of one way to lower that bill, then work your way down the list. In this way, your work will be focused first on getting a discount that will make the biggest cash difference toward your bottom line. A 2% reduction in your big rent bill means more money than a 5% discount on clothing.

For many people, I suspect that largest expense is the monthly mortgage payment or rent. Now before you skip right over it and say, “Well obviously there’s no way I can lower my monthly rent”, think about it. In many cases, there probably is. I recently wrote about how I saved $500 on my monthly rent by doing a little bit of homework. If your apartment lease isn’t up for awhile, why not approach your landlord and tell him you are willing to sign a lease extension if he is willing to negotiate the rent? In this bad economic environment, he may be very happy knowing he can lock in a reliable tenant for another year. If you have a mortgage, why not consider refinancing? Mortgage rates today are the lowest they’ve been in years, and shaving just a point off of your mortgage rate can save you hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. It is important to look at your potential for saving from the point of view of the other party. What do they need? What might you be able to offer them in return for a little bit of savings?

After focusing on your highest expense, work your way down the list. My next highest expense happens to be my monthly food bill. There are several free programs out there, like Rewards Network, that allow you to save 10-40% when eating out without doing nearly anything different at all. Many supermarkets offer cash back or coupon programs that require you only to keep a fob on your keychain.

Next up, my cell phone bill. Did you know that many universities, government organizations, and private companies have worked out deals with cell phone providers to provide students or employees with a discount on their bill? If you need a cell phone to do your job, see if your employer will foot some of the bill for you.

There are plenty of ways to save money on your monthly expenses. Focus first on the biggest expenses without glossing over any of them. Really think about clever ways to save. By concentrating on the big expenses, you’ll be getting biggest return on your time and energy.

Were there any unnecessary expenses we could cut down on? Perhaps. But before asking ourselves to sacrifice, why not ask the people that we were paying to sacrifice instead?

I’ve done this a few times in the past. Most of the time, simply calling up a service provider of yours and asking them for a discount on your monthly bill will work small wonders. The key is to be well prepared in order to make the discount seem as natural as possible to your provider.

I targeted my cable company and phone company.

Every few weeks, I would receive an offer in the mail for cable service that seemed, at face value, to be a better deal than the one I had. $74 per month for cable, phone, and internet. We were paying $60 for cable alone! In actuality, the deal wasn’t as good as it seemed after extra fees plus a lack of cable channels were factored in. This didn’t matter though. All I needed to do was convince the service rep that I believed the deal was better. I called up Time Warner cable and told them about the competitor’s deal.

Me: Hi, I’m calling about a competing deal I received in the mail. RCN is offering $74 per month for cable, phone, and internet. Their cable package alone is much cheaper than my current one. Can you guys make me a comparable offer on my cable bill?
Rep: It looks like you already have one of our best base packages, sir. If you had a higher package, we would be able to help, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.

I had to turn up the heat!

Me: Well, if you cannot give me a better deal, I’ll have no choice but to switch services to your competitor.
Rep: …Please hold for moment, sir.

That got the ball rolling. After being put on hold, I was offered $5 off my monthly bill plus a load of extra channels that we didn’t currently have. Not as good as I expected, but I took the offer, sensing it was all they would give me. The $5 amounts to almost 10% off of our $60 bill, not to mention the fact that I can watch Meerkat Manor all I want now.

After the cable company, I searched the Internet for offers from phone companies and played the same game with Verizon. When their rep sensed I had done a little work, he capitulated rather easily. $15 off of our $85 bill. I took the 17% discount and went on my way.

These figures may seems small, but as I wrote in another post, even small discounts can make a big difference in savings. We saved 9% of our after-tax income in February. If we were able to get, say, 10% discounts on all our expenses comparable to these two (a tall order to be sure), we’d be doubling the amount we could save every month.

As I mentioned when I wrote about getting $500 off of my rent, doing your homework will go a long way toward being taken seriously by the opposite party, and simply making it natural for them to capitulate to your requests. Now go get some discounts! If you like, you can even try to play the “bad economy card” in conjunction with doing your homework. “Times are tough and I don’t know if I’ll have my job for long.” This may give you some added leverage in getting that discount.

Your article’s earning potential can be based on a combination of several elements, including the amount of times it’s been viewed and its category. The more useful your articles are to the reader, the more money you could make

More likely than not, writers are simply being given a cut of the advertising revenue that their articles generate. You post articles, eHow’s computers generate relevant ads to place alongside your article, advertisers pay eHow for each viewer that clicks the ads, and you get a cut. The exact amount of the cut, or the formula that determines how much you’ll earn is not revealed by eHow.

Now, I could be doing the same thing on Wrinkly Dollar, but there are two reasons I’ve decided to diversify a little:

• eHow is a very popular and well-trafficked website, with 15 million visitors per month. It generates more traffic than Wrinkly Dollar (for now!) and, as a result, more ad revenue. I realize I might be getting the short end of the stick as my cut of revenue, but that is still more than I could generate on my own (for now!).
• eHow allows me to write on any variety of topics I like. People visit Wrinkly Dollar to read about personal finance.

I’ve read several success stories to keep myself motivated about writers on eHow making $1,000 per month or more. (I believe these stories by the way. The eHow community seems to be quite a genuine set of folk.) Each of these high-earning writers has a few to several hundred articles written.

Currently, I have a mere 8 articles written in 2 weeks of time. Here’s a look at how my total earnings for April have progressed since I signed up on April 11:

By no means a king’s ransom! But I’m just getting started. Keep in mind that 4 of my 8 articles have earned nothing at all thusfar – it takes some time to generate traffic. All of my earnings have come from articles written over 1 week ago. That is the wonderful thing that I hope to take advantage of – the content can earn you money long after it is written.

So what is my plan for generating more than a few bucks of income? That’s easy – keep writing high-quality articles. For the foreseeable future, I plan to write 20 articles per month – 1 article every day or two. The articles typically take me anywhere from 20 minutes to one hour to write, depending on the complexity of the topic. After reading about the earnings of some other authors, I’ve developed this target schedule for number of articles and earnings at the end of each month:

I think the targets for the first few months should be very achievable. As far as those last few months, time and experience will tell. I’ll be updating you regularly with my eHow efforts and earnings.

Oh, and check out my eHow profile too!

For some people, investing is as simple as buying and selling common stocks through their broker. But there are many more vehicles that one can use to take advantage of investment opportunities. Put options on common stocks are among them, and when used properly, can allow increased exposure to or protection against stock prices.

Options explained

An option is a contract that gives you the right to buy or sell some asset at a predetermined price. We’ll focus on stock options. Let’s start with some terminology:

• The “asset”, in our case, the stock of the company we want to buy, is called the “underlier”.
• A “call” option gives you the right to buy the underlying stock.
• A “put” option gives you the right to sell the underlying stock.
• The predetermined price is called the “strike price”.
• Options have expiration dates attached to them. For US stock options, the expiration date is always the third Saturday of the expiration month.
• In the US, 1 option contract gives the owner rights to 100 shares of the underlying stock.

Think of an option as a piece of paper. With it, you could go to a broker or any other party and say, “I have this call option that allows me to buy 100 shares of GE stock at $10. It expires near the end of June. Today, it’s April 22, and GE’s stock is trading at $11.80.” The broker can buy GE stock in the market for $11.80 or he can buy your call option from you, and then go buy GE stock for $10. So, he’d be willing to pay you at least $1.80 for the option, it’s “intrinsic value”. But, the option doesn’t expire for another 2 months! What if GE’s stock rises in that time? The option to buy at $10 could be worth much more. Therefore, the broker should be willing to pay a little more than $1.80, to compensate you for this extra “time value”. In the end, the broker should be willing to pay $1.80 plus a bit more for your call option. (The concept of paying for possible movements in price is the crux of the broader financial concept of “optionality”. We’ll leave the specifics of “time value” for another article.)

In purchasing any option, the buyer specifies 5 things:

1. Is it a put or call?
2. What is the underlier?
3. What is the strike price?
4. What is the expiration?
5. And of course, what price will you pay for the option?

From our example above, the broker would be buying June GE calls at $10 for, say, $2.40.

How puts can be used

Just as calls give you the right to buy stock, puts give you the right to sell stock. It doesn’t matter whether you own the stock or not. Remember, think of the put option as a piece of paper that gives you the right to sell. If we owned a put on GE stock, someone out there would be willing to pay us money in exchange for the simple right to sell it at a different (higher) price than the market price, regardless of whether we own the stock or not.

Let’s imagine for a second that we own stock in GE, but we are fearful that the stock may drop in price in the near term. One thing we could do is sell the stock, but that may not seem appealing if we want to hold it for the long run. Another option is options! We could buy a put on GE. We would still own the stock, which would drop in value if the market price dropped, but we would also own the put, which would rise in value as the stock’s market price fell.

For example, suppose we own 100 shares of GE and the current price as of April 22 is $11.80. We are fearful that the price will fall in the coming months. We purchase 1 put contract on GE for December expiration at a $12 strike for $2.50. This $2.50 price represents $0.20 of intrinsic value and $2.30 of time value. Suppose the price of GE falls to $5 before the end of December rolls around. Out stock has lost $6.80 in value, but our put options are worth $7 plus any time value remaining, after we paid $2.50 for them.

Let’s compare our per share loss with and without the puts:

• With the put option purchase: Loss = $7 – $2.50 – $6.80 = -$2.30, the original time value of the option
• Without the put option purchase: Loss = -$6.80, the loss on the stock

As you can see, purchasing the put options is like buying insurance. Should the stock fall in price, our losses are capped at the original amount in time value that we paid for the put option. If the stock rises in price, we still experience the upside in the stock’s value (since we own 100 shares) minus the $2.50 per share we paid for our put options. We can summarize our per share profit or loss based on the stock’s final market price (when we sell our options or when they expire in December):

• Final price <= $12: Loss of $2.30
• $12 < Final price < $14.30: Loss of $2.50 – stock appreciation
• Final price >= $14.30: Profit of stock appreciation – $2.50

We have protected ourselves against any downside in GE’s stock price without selling the stock, and we have done so while retaining the upside, all for the price of $2.30, the original time value of our put option.

Getting naked

You can also use puts for speculation or as an alternative to shorting stocks. Whenever an investor purchases or sells options without having a position in the underlying asset, the option is described as a “naked” one. Let’s assume that I believe the stock market in general will suffer declines in prices for some time. I could purchase puts on the S&P 500 to profit from the decline. As the general prices of stocks sank, the price of my put options would rise. I’ll note here that purchasing puts directly on the S&P 500 is not possible, but you can purchase puts on a vehicle that replicates the S&P 500 and achieve the same effect. One such vehicle is S&P Depository Receipts.

Buying puts may be a better alternative than outright shorting for the novice investor who believes market prices will fall:

1. Shorting stocks leaves the investor with unlimited downside should market prices rise. The downside when buying puts is simply the original price of the puts.
2. Most brokers require a margin account (one approved for borrowing) in order to short. In buying puts, the investor is required to have the cash upfront.
3. Buying puts can amplify returns compared to shorting when large price changes in the underlier occur.

Buying puts can be a good way to hedge yourself against downside in the prices of stocks you own. It can also be an effective way to profit from market downturns that you believe may occur.

But I ran into a snag.

I started preparing federal taxes for my wife and myself as “married filing jointly”. This is almost always the best way for married couples to file with the federal government, since you’ll each be charged at a higher tax rate if you file separately. (There are some uncommon circumstances wherein filing separately does makes sense, however.) Filing jointly, we are due a refund of $1,300, whereas filing separately, we would have owed the federal government about $1,000. Great!

Once I completed our federal return, I started working on our state returns.

We had to file two state returns, one for New York and one for Illinois. I had been living in New York for all of 2008, but my wife spent half of the year in Illinois and then moved to New York for the second half. After preparing our two joint state returns, I was surprised. The results for Illinois were as expected, but the New York return indicated that we owed the state $900! Never before have I owed New York or any other state more than a few tens of dollars, and 2008 wasn’t a drastically different year for us. The $900 bill struck me as odd.

So with some help from an accountant I know, I did some investigating. After checking each of our tax forms by hand, I discovered that my tax software was interpreting my wife’s Illinois income as taxable by New York State as well. This should not have been the case. I originally thought this was due to a quirk in the New York State tax law, but after reading Publication 88 of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, I no longer believe that is the case. The law indeed states that only “New York source income” is taxable by the State, as one would expect. Any tax professionals out there, please correct me if I’m wrong.

The solution came after reading this quote in Publication 88:

If you are married and filing a joint federal income tax return and one spouse is a New York State resident and the other is a nonresident or part-year resident, you are required to file separate New York State returns.

My wife and I would have to file joint federal returns, but separate state returns.

(By the way, this is where my downloaded TaxCut software was much better to use over an online version – I was able to prepare the forms for our joint federal return first, and then easily start over and prepare separate state returns. With the online version, I would have incurred a lot of money in extra charges to do this.)

In filing separate state returns, the tax software got it right the first time. My wife’s Illinois income was taxed only by Illinois, and her New York income was taxed only by New York. The result? A $200 New York refund for my wife and a $35 liability for me. Much better than the original $900 liability for the two of us!

The moral of the story is this:

1. Before filing, make sure to check over all your tax forms and don’t blindly trust your computer tax software.
2. Nothing replaces a solid understanding of your own tax laws and liabilities.
3. Don’t be afraid to do a little digging for information. Tax laws can be intimidating, but finding the information you need can be quick and easy on the Internet.

In my case, following these three tips helped me save about $1,100.

With all that said, there’s still one issue in favor of PC’s – they generally cost less. (In my mind, the increased cost for a Mac is well worth it, but let’s put that aside for now.) So, with cost in mind, here’s a few tips on how to get that Mac you want for as little cash as possible. We’ll take a 15″ MacBook Pro retailing for about $2,250 as an example.

1. Use educational or company discounts. Apple offers educational discounts for many schools in the US and around the world. Chances are, if you’re a student, teacher, or administrator working in a school, you will qualify for a discount somewhere in the range of 10%. Apple also has discount agreements with many companies, so that their employees can get a few bucks off of their computer purchases (or purchases of any Apple products). Typically, these discounts are a little less than the ones in the educational store.
Discount: 10%, or $225

2. Get a free printer and sell it. Apple also has a standing offer for buyers purchasing a new computer. They offer $100 toward the purchase of a new printer. If you already have a printer, all the better. Take the offer and buy a printer that costs $100 from Apple. They will refund the purchase price for you, and you can take your free printer and sell it somewhere like eBay, effectively taking your purchase price down even further. In my experience, I’ve found sales on eBay will net me about 75% of my purchase price after fees.
Effective Discount: $75

3. Wait until the summer, get a free iPod, and sell it. Historically, Apple run its Back-to-School promotion every year from June to September, whereby it offers a free iPod to students purchasing a new computer. A buyer could take the iPod and sell it on eBay along with the printer to net even more of an effective discount. Last year, Apple offered students a free 8GB iPod Touch, which retails for $299.
Effective Discount: $225

Let’s tally up our savings!

Original purchase price: $2,250
- Educational/corporate discount: $225
- Printer sold: $75
- iPod sold: $225
= $1,725

That’s a total of $525 in savings, or 23% or the original purchase price! Quite a deal!

I’ll note here that some of the steps above require the buyer to be a student (or for a student to at least “help” you with your purchase). For to who can’t take advantage of those, Apple sells refurbished computers for a discount of roughly 15%, another great way to save some cash.

There are several companies out there that will pay you for survey taking and for product evaluation. (Getting a free product that you would otherwise buy is like being paid all in itself). These companies allow you to register with them via their website. They’ll take your home address so that when it comes time to be paid or when they have a product to evaluate, they can mail you a check or the goods. Many also offer payment via PayPal.

Before taking a look at some of survey websites, let’s get one thing out of the way. You’re not going to become rich taking surveys or evaluating products. Most of these companies offer pay comparable to minimum wage when considering the time needed to take the survey. That said, getting even a little money for time spent on the Internet that might have otherwise been wasted can feel pretty nice.

Each company you sign up for will contact you via email when a survey is available for you to take. They will also contact you when they have a survey in mind for you, but if they need additional information to see if you qualify for it. The best survey sites are the ones that do not waste your time or mislead you. The worst are the ones that do, perhaps by inundating you with nonpaying surveys or by misstating the time it takes for a survey. I recommend signing up with several companies, and weeding out the ones that suit you best. Here are three sites that I am familiar with to get you started, in order of preference:

1. Pinecone Research (Rating: Highly Recommended)
   Pinecone is an excellent consumer survey company. They’ll pay you $3 for each survey you qualify for. I’ve been paid a few times by Pinecone, as you can see below. They send a check out promptly every time I complete a survey. (Pinecone just implemented a PayPal option too.) Survey offers appear in my inbox about once every week or two. Historically, Pinecone has been closed to new members, only opening up to applications via existing member referrals. But enterprising individuals can find signup links out there on the Internet, like this one.     

   

2. American Consumer Opinion (Rating: Recommended)
   American Consumer Opinion is another good survey company to consider, although after being registered with them for about two months, I have yet to qualify for a paid survey. But they do not waste my time with unappealing surveys. They send out offers to me for preliminary surveys about every two or three weeks, and the offers they do send typically pay better than Pinecone’s. I received an offer recently for an $8 survey lasting 30 minutes, but after filling out a few preliminary questions, I failed to qualify for it. A reputable company by all indications. 
3. SurveySpot (Rating: A notch below)
   Survey Spot is a website that I have heard good things about, but that has left me disappointed. The company floods my inbox with five surveys a day, most of them nonpaying. Instead of cash, they offer an entry into a cash prize drawing, but I won’t fall for that trick. Whenever I have received a paying survey, which occurs every tenth survey or so, one of two things has happened: I don’t qualify for the survey or they reach their participant limit before I can get a chance to click the link, and I usually click within a day or two. Pinecone, for instance, won’t play these games – they’ll give you an ample, set amount of time to complete your survey. While my experience hasn’t been the best with SurveySpot, I won’t condemn them outright just yet. Your mileage may vary. It certainly can’t hurt to sign up and try them yourself for a few days.

Enjoy making a few bucks out there! Let me know your opinion of the companies I’ve mentioned and some others you’ve tried too.